Compare Project Management Methods: Agile, Scrum, Kanban etc.

What are the differences between Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and Waterfall? Or the mix of either two of these methods? 

In this blog post, I will explore these five project management methods including hybrid), their pros and cons, and help you decide on a methodology that works for your agency. 

First, what are the things to consider while choosing a project management method for your creative agency? 

How to Choose a Project Management Method 

There is no perfect, "one-size-fits-all" way to manage a project. Also, there are a lot of creative workflow management tools out there. So, consider the following while choosing a tool or methodology for your projects: 

• Rigidity vs. flexibility: is your project subject to many changes along the way? Do you expect a dynamic work environment, or do you rather have a specific budget, tools, and sure-footed roadmap you must follow? 

For example, will your client want to add a new feature, say a user authentication system, after you've built their product marketplace, or will you have everything and they won’t make iterations? 

If they’ll need to make iterations as you continue to build, you'd want a project management method that lets you scope new features, adjust development timelines, and rework the user flow without starting from scratch. 

• Collaboration: Do you need input from others to complete individual tasks? Does your project involve a lot of collaboration and is your team equipped for efficient communication? 

For example, a branding project might mean the designers will work with copywriters. It might also mean the developers might be waiting on these two different teams so they can promote the new brand image on the company’s website and blogs. 

You must consider a project management method and tool that lets you sync communication and manage deliveries with all these teams without friction. 

• Experience: Do you already have experience with project management? If so, more rigid, collaboration-based methods will probably work well for you. If not, opt for flexibility or "solo work" methodologies. 
• Resources: How big is your team, how much time can you spend on extensive documentation, and finally—how much money can you afford to invest in project management tools? All of these factors must be considered when choosing a methodology. 

The key takeaway from this is that you must ensure you know what you're supposed to do from the beginning until the end.

Here's an easy way to choose between these methods: Waterfall is great if you're building complex systems with multiple task dependencies, documentation, and phase approvals, say medical software or a project for a highly regulated industry. 

But if you're creating a product—a web app or digital service—and you want to ship features quickly and adapt based on users' feedback, choose Agile. 

Five Project Management Methods for a Creative Agency 

With these considerations in mind, here are five project management methods you can consider. Each method has strengths and weaknesses, so understanding how they work will help you choose the right one for your team and projects. 

1. Agile Project Management Method 

Agile project management involves discovering requirements and developing solutions through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer(s)/end-user(s). 

What does this mean exactly? 

This means you build your project step by step and show progress to clients along the way. For example, if you're designing a website, you create the homepage first, show it to the client, make changes based on their feedback, and then move on to other pages. 

Graphically, it can be represented like this:

The Agile method starts with 

• Planning and ideation based on some user stories, 
• Moves through design and development sprints, 
• You test each release/update, 
• Collect user feedback and 
• Ends with evaluating user feedback and updating the product based on that feedback. 

The cycle then repeats with new features and improvements. 

Agile helps you deliver working features regularly while staying responsive to changes. Instead of waiting months to show progress, you deliver value in short cycles, typically 2-4 weeks. This means your clients see tangible results sooner and can provide feedback that shapes the project's direction. 

It's no surprise that this methodology works so well for software development. But it can also be applied to any other type of project. 

For example, in a branding agency. You can start by brainstorming ideas and running them by your client. You can then move to executing the idea and showing the draft to your client. They give feedback, and you fix their deliverables based on the feedback. 

After the work is approved, you move on to other projects, and the loop continues. This way, your work conforms to their interests every step of the way rather than sending them the final version of their work. 

Agile Pros & Cons 

Pros: 

• Extremely flexible. If you're not sure what the final version of your software/service/product will look like, go Agile. 
• Reduces project risk through regular testing and delivery. 
• Get your product to market faster. From the get-go, you can generate revenue and have your clients or customers shape your final product with their feedback. This is most applicable if you’re building a software product or trying to refine your service by building in public, as Erica Schneider does here. 
• It helps identify issues early through continuous testing and feedback. It also helps you communicate better with the client so you know their expectations. 
• Makes it easier to adapt to changing market conditions or client needs 

Cons: 

• Difficult to predict. You may have to pivot multiple times, and possibly go for something completely different than you first wanted to create. For example, based on feedback, you may end up creating something totally different from what you thought your users needed. 
• It may require more client time and involvement than other methods. 
• It can be challenging in regulated environments that require extensive documentation. 
• It is very time and capital-intensive. Constantly updating your services or software to better respond to the market might be costly in terms of resources and time.
• Difficult to implement for larger teams because coordinating daily feedback and quick changes becomes complex when you have 20+ designers and developers working on the same project. Communication breaks down, and tasks overlap. 

2. Method 

Scrum is very similar to Agile in terms of principles: flexibility and short-term iterations. 

It’s a specific framework within the Agile methodology. While Agile is a set of principles, Scrum provides a structured way to implement them through defined roles, ceremonies, and artifacts.

The framework operates through these key roles:

• Scrum Master: Ensures the team follows Scrum practices and removes obstacles
• Product Owner: Represents stakeholder interests and manages the product backlog
• Development Team: Self-organizing group that executes the work

You could represent Scrum like this:

Work happens in sprints—typically 2-4 week cycles where teams commit to delivering specific features or outcomes. Each sprint includes: 

1. Sprint Planning: The team selects work for the sprint. 
2. Daily Standups: 15-minute check-ins to share progress and obstacles. 
3. Sprint Review: The team shows completed work to stakeholders. 
4. Sprint Retrospective: The team discusses process improvements. 

For example, in a 2-week sprint, a design team might commit to completing 3 web page designs. They meet daily for 15 minutes to share progress and blockers. At the end of the sprint, they show the completed designs to stakeholders and discuss what worked well or needs improvement in their process. 

Scrum Pros & Cons

Pros: 

• Provides clear structure through regular ceremonies (team meetings) that keep everyone aligned. 
• Makes progress visible through sprint backlogs and burndown charts. 
• Helps teams improve through regular retrospectives. 
• Allows quick adaptation through short sprint cycles. 
• Reduces project risk through frequent stakeholder reviews. 

Cons: 

• It can feel rigid if sprint lengths and ceremonies aren't adjusted for team needs.
• It may not suit projects with unpredictable workloads or frequent emergencies.
• It is difficult to implement with part-time team members or when there are multiple projects. It also has a high chance of failure if team members are not committed or cooperative. 
• For smaller teams or projects, daily standups and ceremonies can feel excessive. They can also frustrate some members who believe they take up productive time. 

3. Kanban Project Management Method 

Kanban is a visual project management method that maps out your workflow on a board with different columns (like "To Do," "In Progress," “Completed,” and "Done" or “Closed”). You move tasks through these columns as work progresses. Here’s what that looks like if you use a project management tool with a client portal like ManyRequests: 

Kanban encourages small, incremental, and efficient steps toward project completion.

In principle, it is fairly straightforward: a visualized, real-time workflow (called the Kanban board) helps determine and track the amount of work that must be completed for each phase. 

Unlike Scrum, which has fixed sprints, Kanban focuses on a continuous flow of work. You limit how many tasks can be in each column to prevent overload. For example, your “In Progress” column might have a limit of 3 tasks—meaning your team can't start new work until they complete something. 

You could represent Kanban like this:

The goal here is to reduce "work in progress" issues. This prevents the common problem of having too many tasks started but nothing finished. 

Determine the amount of work that must go into each phase and break it down into simple, trackable tasks that will help increase throughput and speed.

Kanban Pros & Cons

Pros: 

• Visibility. Kanban helps your team get on the same page and clearly visualize what's next.
• Flexibility. It's easy to reorganize, prioritize, and sort your deliverables again and again depending on your client or market's needs. As seen below, you can easily move the Kanban board on ManyRequests to move projects through different phases. 

The team members added to the specific project will be notified of the update. For example, a team member can move a task to “Pending Feedback” to notify the team leader that they’ve completed it. 

The team leader can also move the task to “Revisions Needed” to notify the team members that they have added feedback and must address the comments. 

• It eliminates the need for meetings. 
• Easily expose issues with your project. For example, if a column becomes too long, it may indicate a problem with your resources. It may also mean that you're lagging. 

Cons: 

• It can become cluttered with too many tasks. 
• Team members might start cherry-picking easier tasks. 
• Lack of timing. Most Kanban boards do not include strict deadlines or are not updated often enough by team members. This happens when many tasks move from one specific board to another, and their deadlines aren’t well managed. 

To prevent this, choose creative workflow management tools that allow you to add due dates on all tasks and remind team members of their deadlines. 

4. Waterfall Project Management Method 

The Waterfall is a linear, easy-to-understand, critical-path-focused project management methodology.

This method is pretty straightforward and is a process in which the phases of the project flow downward.

In other words, once you complete a phase or task, you move on to the other. Simple as that!

It can be represented like this:

The model is best used in rigorous projects, where everything is determined, planned, and scheduled well in advance. 

Agencies choose Waterfall when projects need strict phase approvals and detailed documentation. It works well for: 

• Complex client websites with compliance requirements (like healthcare or financial). 
• Government agency marketing projects that need multiple approvals. 
• Large-scale branding projects with fixed deliverables and strict brand guidelines. 
• Projects where clients need every detail planned and approved upfront. 

Waterfall Pros & Cons

Pros: 

• Makes project costs and timelines easier to quote to clients. 
• Step-by-step structure. With Waterfall, it's easy for the entire team to always know what comes next. 
• Works well for clients who need to secure budget approval upfront
• Clear end goal. Commit to a specific deliverable from the very beginning. 
• Highly methodical, with a comprehensible transfer of information from one phase to the next one. Creates clear documentation for client approvals and handoffs. 
• Helps manage large projects with multiple stakeholders and approval layers

Cons: 

• Little flexibility. If a phase or task is over, it's hard to backtrack and modify the completed work without impacting the next phase. In other words, once a phase is completed, making changes requires revisiting and potentially redoing earlier work, which can disrupt the entire project timeline and workflow. 

Waterfall’s linear structure doesn’t easily accommodate mid-project adjustments. 

• Delayed feedback. Because Waterfall usually focuses on reaching the end goal, there is no shaping of the product/service while it is already in production. Compared to Agile method, there is no constant feedback loop. 
• Not desirable in projects where requirements constantly change. 

5. Hybrid Project Management Method

Hybrid project management combines elements of both Waterfall and Agile methodologies to create a flexible yet structured approach. Think of agile vs. waterfall as taking the best parts of each method to match your specific project needs. 

You could represent the Hybrid method like this:

For example, a creative agency might use Waterfall methods for the initial project planning, define the scope, and take feedback from the client, then switch to Agile sprints for the design and development work. This means you work with the client back to back throughout the project, but you don’t involve them until you create a design mockup. 

This allows for structured planning upfront while maintaining flexibility for creative iterations and client feedback during execution.

Hybrid Pros & Cons

Pros:

• It combines structure with flexibility. This helps to maintain clear project milestones while allowing for creative iterations
• Better client management. It allows structured planning for feedback/approval and provides room for feedback and changes
• Resource optimization. It helps you plan long-term resources while managing short-term creative sprints. 
• Adaptable to different project types. The hybrid approach is useful for both complex web development projects and straightforward design work

Cons: 

• Requires experienced project managers who understand both methodologies. 
• It can be complex to implement initially. Teams need clear guidelines on when to use which approach. 
• It may create confusion if transition points between methods aren't clearly defined. 
• It is unsuitable for small projects where the overhead cost might outweigh the benefits. 

The hybrid method works particularly well for creative agencies handling diverse project types, from branding to web development, where different phases require different approaches to management and delivery.

Wrapping Up: 

In the end, as this Redditor says, “Your goal is to do as many small experiments up front as you can to be sure you build the correct thing.

Shorten feedback loops. Build down the common main path. Figure out the best, least costly way to make informed decisions”. 

Also, flexibility & quality communication is key as Chernya says. 

1. “If you decide to use an Agile approach and stick strictly to its rules and/or workflow, the project will either fail or everyone involved will be unsatisfied. 
2. If you decide to use a Waterfall approach and stick strictly to its rules and/or workflow, the same will happen. 

The key … is to recognize which items/rules/workflows are usable from different frameworks/methodologies and adapting them properly to the project. Every project is different and different rules can apply to them.”

Regardless of your choices, you can use ManyRequests to manage your projects or create a client portal without friction. 

You can use our Kanban board to visualize your workflow and move tasks through different stages—from planning to completion. You can also reorder tasks within columns to match your priorities, whether through Agile sprints or Waterfall phases. 

You can use our client portal to submit every deliverable, collect feedback through markup tools, and get client sign-offs. You can also track hours spent on tasks, generate timesheet reports, and analyze team performance to optimize your workflow. 

Use ManyRequests for free for 7 days to see how it can help you manage your project faster while collaborating with every team member.

Originally Posted: March 12, 2021